


saints made of gold

by Russet



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: AU where they discover the vaccine and there are more safe zones now?, Future Fic, Gen, Grandpa/grand-uncle Lalli, hotakainen cousins feels, the rest of the cast is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7064527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Russet/pseuds/Russet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agda tried using her puppy dog eyes, Tuuri's specialty. Lalli narrowed his eyes. He had too much experience dealing with this from her grandmother. No meant no.</p><p>"Please?" she whined, and Lalli considered dropping her down a well. Good riddance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	saints made of gold

**Author's Note:**

> somehow they miraculously find a vaccine instead of stumbling into a troll's nest at a medical research facility. basically the future AU in which the gang doesn't have rotten luck.

There is a new Silent World museum in one of the villages of Saimaa.

Lalli knew of this mainly because Tuuri’s granddaughter would _not_ stop bugging him about it. He thought of spitting on her flowers before visiting her grave the next time, but that seemed even a little too petty for him. 

Agda was currently draped over his shoulders, whining into his ear, “ _Please_? It’d be so cool! They have exhibits of the monsters and everything!”

He shook his head resolutely. He wasn’t even going to grace that with a reply. The last thing he needed was phantom urges to shoot everything in the head.

She tried using her trademark puppy dog eyes, her grandmother's specialty, but Lalli knew this trick like the back of his hand. What a weak attack. No meant no.

“They have statues of Grandma and the team,” Agda said, with a sly grin. “Including you!”

He paused. Agda was a little devil. He almost felt proud of her. Maybe the next time he visited Tuuri he’d bring extra flowers instead.

Slowly, he sighed and got up. Well, now he was curious.

Agda cheered. Lalli held her small hand and thought of dropping her down a well.

At least the settlement was only a short trip by boat. He could restrain himself in the meantime from ordering back to her parents’ house, from which she seemed to be constantly sneaking out of.

* * *

 

Walking into the museum, Lalli was beginning to feel like his curiousity was not worth the trouble.

"Trolls of the Silent World!" one of the signs in front of an exhibit proclaimed, framed by a model of a troll with bulging eyes and a drooling mouth. He stared at it disdainfully. Many trolls didn't even have a face, but this cartoonish, inaccurate piece of garbage seemed to assume that they were all rabid wild dogs or something of the like.

They really should have consulted more scholars on the reconstructions. He picked up a small model of a Danish soldier in the middle of a sprawling exhibit of the Danish reclamation projects, and peered at its face. It looked nothing like Mikkel at all. All Danish people looked alike, right? Very inaccurate.

Vaguely, he was aware of small hands forcing the soldier out of his hands (breaking off part of its belt, but then frantically chucking it into a fake lake), someone pushing him away from the exhibit, muttering small apologies to everyone else in the room.

"Stop picking up the models, they're expensive," Agda hissed, and suddenly they were heading to the centre of the museum. There was a raised platform in the middle. 

Lalli let himself be pulled along, ignoring Agda's meaningless chatter. Around him, he was suddenly aware of people staring at him, pointing him out to their family and friends, whispering things into each other's ears while peering at him curiously.

He stared back at them, and they looked away with embarrassed blushes and giggles.

"Don't stare at people," Agda scolded, hand still pulling at his shirt, keeping him in motion. "It's creeping them out."

Lalli frowned down at her. "They stared at me first."

"That's because you're a hero," she said, as though this was a well-known fact. He frowned with even more disdain. What? "It's natural for them to stare at you, but you have to pretend you can't see or hear them at all, otherwise it gets awkward."

A dozen question marks appeared in his mind, but the confusion was beginning to irritate him, so he dealt with it, naturally, by pushing all the questions away and going along with Agda. In the back of his mind, he mourned the fact that Agda was apparently reaching the age at which people turned incomprehensible to him.

When they reached the middle of the museum, he stopped, ignoring Agda's insistent tugs to further move forward.

Vaguely, he wondered if his decision to spend every day of his life either in his house or the forest was perhaps an ill-made one.

Towering above him, six figures stood bathed in light from the circular skylight.

"Discoverers of the Vaccine," the giant silver plaque at the statues' feet said. They hadn't really discovered the vaccine so much as stumble upon a half-finished product and let scholars with seven years of medical research do the rest of the work for them, but he supposed brave adventurers venturing out into the unknown Silent World made for a better headline story than hundreds of scholars from different nations drinking nothing but coffee for years.

Lalli scrutinised the one that he supposed was himself. He wondered idly if the added muscular bulk on the statue was simply his hallucination or a fanciful reimagination of his figure on the sculptor's part.

"Look, there's Captain Sigrun!" Agda whispered in awe, pointing at the figure that stood proudly in the centre of the platform, triumphant grin plastered on her stone face. Lalli looked down at Agda's star-crossed eyes, asking himself silently how a small child had decided immediately upon meeting a loud, snarky old lady to take that person as her personal hero.

"She was a goofball," he said, because children needed to know that their heroes were people as well. Also maybe because he was feeling a little spiteful.

"Seriously?" Agda breathed, pressing her face closer towards the exhibit, peering up at Sigrun's statue.

"Yes," he said, glaring at it. "Blatant disregard for her teammates' hygiene and comfort."

"And he had terrible hair," he said, pointing at Reynir. "He wasn't even supposed to be there." 

It had been easier, Lalli supposed, to say that they had conveniently left out Reynir's name in the pre-voyage records out of carelessness, rather than admit that a real life human being had accidentally been shipped to the team instead of food.

"No way," she gasped. Lalli rarely agreed to talk about their trip into the Silent World. He mostly just sulked in the background of family events.

"In fact, your grandmother," he said, now that he was on a roll. "Was inconsiderate, insensitive, and completely tactless."

Agda paused. 

"Really?" she said slowly. Tuuri's face looked down at all of the visitors with a wide smile, the type that crinkled the corners of her eyes and made her look like an angelic cherub. "I always thought she was basically an angel. She used to give me cookies and knit woollen hats for me."

Lalli placed a hand on her head of curls. He thought of all those nights of painful miscommunication, the frustration that eventually boiled and built up into angry silent treatments and hissed arguments. The careless way she'd dismiss his feelings, treat his role with a carefree ease that made him feel isolated and alone. She had never understood him, and he had never been good at verbally communicating how he felt, so their relationship had fallen apart, into decay and ruin.

"I always got along better with Onni," he said, leaning some of his weight on Agda. But he thought of the days after the storm, slowly picking up the the debris left behind from their explosive disagreements, giving each other little peace offerings and quiet acknowledgements.

He thought of Tuuri, stubborn but fiercely caring, always quick to assume that she knew best, yet willing to allow Lalli the space and time to explain himself through his quiet ways, coming to understand him better and tolerate each other. Small apologies made in the form of concessions, extra cookies, offers to teach him Swedish and Icelandic so he didn't have to feel so alone.

He still visited her grave every week. The cemetery was peaceful, and he sat under the trees there sometimes in the mornings, humming old Finnish lullabies to himself and the cousin slumbering beneath the earth.

"But she was a good person," he said, petting Agda on the head. "She was cheerful when none of us could muster the energy, and insanely curious when none of us would take the risk. We wouldn't have discovered the vaccine, without her. I think the team would've fallen apart, in fact."

Agda hummed, looking up at her heroes curiously.

His gaze swept across their faces as well, taking in their features. Sigrun, who had always put her team before herself. Mikkel, keeping them all in line pragmatically. Emil, who had a heart of gold, had showed him compassion and friendship, even while babbling Swedish nonsense.

Reynir was pretty useless, he thought spitefully. But he supposed he  _had_ saved their lives a couple of times. And was generally, sometimes, maybe, not a waste of space.

Agda's hand slipped into his.

"They were good people," Lalli said, which was perhaps a weak summary of the torrent of feelings he had for them, the small swell of his chest at the thought of the times they shared together. He thought of where they were now, either far across oceans and mountains or buried in the ground. 

"I still miss them."

 

**Author's Note:**

> i have a lot of hotakainen cousin feelings okay


End file.
